


in paper rings, in picture frames, in dirty dreams

by safeandsound13



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, as in the truest truth ive ever known is that, bellamy blake and clarke griffin are in love and soulmates and get a happy ending, honestly this aint much but it was honest work, oh and
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 17:20:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29969736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/safeandsound13/pseuds/safeandsound13
Summary: Right now Octavia’s slurping on a pink cocktail noisily, a small purple umbrella tucked behind her ear and her breath smelling like peach, something Clarke only notices because of how freakishly close she is leaning to her face. “He always told me he was going to marry you in high school.”“What?” Clarke starts, grimacing as she slams down a shot. Her face relaxes once it gets over the initial shock of the burn in the back of her throat, but her frown remains. Her soon-to-be sister-in-law’s green eyes are glazed over from all the copious amounts of alcohol they’ve consumed, the music is so fucking head-poundingly loud, and whatever it is that she’s saying is making zero sense. “We hated each other in high school.”
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 51
Kudos: 301





	in paper rings, in picture frames, in dirty dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [loverosie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/loverosie/gifts).



> this is for the enigma who silently evolved from loudly wanting to see certain lord farquaads to be ran over by a car and begging for incestous fics to being considerate of other people's feelings and prompting me to write tooth-rotting fluff. happy belated bell to my amy (my legal name). that development tho! i love you almost as much as we love bellamy.

Octavia is the one who tells her. It’s at her bachelorette party, which was thrown kind of last minute, considering the wedding is tomorrow. Clarke didn’t want one, not per se anyway, but didn’t care enough to dig her heels in when Octavia insisted she was committing a capital crime if she didn’t — especially since Miller took Bellamy out for steaks and cigars over a month ago — and promised to take care of everything. Right now she’s slurping on a pink cocktail noisily, a small purple umbrella tucked behind her ear and her breath smelling like peach, something Clarke only notices because of how freakishly close she is leaning to her face. “He always told me he was going to marry you in high school.”

“What?” Clarke starts, grimacing as she slams down a shot. Her face relaxes once it gets over the initial shock of the burn in the back of her throat, but her frown remains. Her soon-to-be sister-in-law’s green eyes are glazed over from all the copious amounts of alcohol they’ve consumed, the music is so fucking head-poundingly loud, and whatever it is that she’s saying is making _zero_ sense. “We hated each other in high school.”

Bellamy was a senior by the time Clarke transferred from a private school in her sophomore year, after her dad died and her mom sold his company to the lowest and most willing bidder. He had a heart attack and her mom was so fucked up on opioids she couldn’t even think straight for long enough to call an ambulance, and used up most of her trustfund to afford her special hobby, so it made for a strained home environment during those first few years. 

Fighting Bellamy during the day relieved some of that stress, and sometimes could even make her forget for a few hours. She’s not even sure why he fought back so hard, just that he assumed she was a stuck-up, entitled and privileged rich girl — to his credit not _entirely_ faulty — and he didn’t like her invading his terf, also known as the debate club. Of course she thought he was cute, as did the rest of the school, at least whenever he shut up long enough for her to realize there was more to him than a rude mouth and a lot of authoritative complexes, but once he graduated, that was it for them. She thought she’d never see him again.

For the years after, he didn’t exist to her beyond a passing mention of him on his sister’s Facebook every light year, not until Clarke moved into the same building as him after college. With her on night shifts almost exclusively and Bellamy either bouncing or bartending at his friend’s Miller’s bar throughout grad school, they were pretty much on the same schedule every day. They’d run into each other all the time — whether it was the laundry room in the basement, the shitty elevator that was prime ground for immense but very awkward sexual tension for thirty long seconds at a time, or that one fucking night she got locked out and was stuck in the hallway for hours until he decided to take mercy on her — but once one of their greasy neighbours developed a hobby for practicing his terrible dj-ing skills at eight in the morning (you will never be famous, John Murphy, please stop trying) and they had a mutual hatred to bond over, their friendship was pretty much set in stone. 

One drunken rooftop party in the middle of a heatwave during summer led to one thing — a macaroni photo frame previously on his wall, very expensive Fenty lacy panties previously on her body and her dignity in the morning doing the Walk of Shame were all part of the casualties — which led to another — moving into a single apartment and wearing the ring her dad got for her mom around her finger — and now they are definitely more than the antagonistic debate team members they once were.

“No,” Octavia barks out with a harsh laugh, pulling her back from her reverie. “ _You_ hated him. He was obsessed with you.”

She narrows her eyes, a full year of glares and heated arguments flashing in front of her eyes in rapid succession. One time he even made the bus leave a tournament without her because she was ten minutes late to their first match. “Bullshit.”

Her boney fingers curl around her shoulder, as she starts, slurring just a little, “Babe.” Octavia must be fucking _plastered_ because they’re not that close. “From the moment you started walking the halls in your expensive slutty little v-necks like you owned the place, you were all he could talk about.”

_Like you owned the place._ That was the very reason he couldn’t stand her to start with. Clarke stares at her for a beat longer trying to figure out if she’s purposely screwing with her before she realizes the brunette won’t budge — she never does — and then shakes her head, hoping to clear some of the fuzziness from it. 

_There’s no way._ She doesn’t even know why it strikes her with such impossibility and violent defensiveness, maybe the vague nostalgia for a road never taken, an imaginary and non-existent life of _ifs_ , the suggestion she could’ve spared herself so much hurt and been _a lot_ happier a long time ago, no matter how unrealistic and overly romanticised the idea.

Her co-worker Raven excitedly yelps somewhere in the near distance, and then Josie’s beckoning them over to come throw dollar bills at a stripper and the absurd implication that Bellamy _liked_ her temporarily flees her mind. 

Later that night, sticky with sweat from dancing and covered in body glitter, she crawls into bed with him. The angry red of an alarm clock struck way past 3 a.m. painfully glares at her, so she hides her scrunched up face into his neck. A few of his messy curls tickle her temple, but she ignores the annoying sensation, and the little good-natured groan he lets out at being disturbed. Her initial reason to come here, home, was because she missed him, and she wanted to confront him too, because _there is_ no _fucking way you beat me to liking you, nuh uh, I wanted to marry you first, you asshole._

Clarke might be emotionally dense and out of touch with her feelings and sometimes very oblivious to those of other people, but she remembers the moment clearly — three dates in. After their initial slip up at that rooftop party she bought him a new photo frame with a bow on it that she dug up from the bottom of one of her drawers, making fun of the picture of him and his sister as young children because he looked ridiculous with his clunky oversized brown glasses, but also for compensation, obviously. He agreed to go out with her, they did an ice cream parlor for their first date, dinner and a movie for their second. Just kissing, no wandering hands or lips, driving her absolutely insane and making her a mass-consumer of battery packs for those first few weeks. Bellamy wanted to take it slow, wanted to be a gentleman, wanted her to be absolutely sure. He called in a favor to take her to one of her favorite museums after hours, and prepared this whole homemade picnic from scratch, and then ditched her halfway through to go pick up a friend who got stranded on the side of the road with a flat tire. She decided then. Not later, when he showed up to her place with take-out and grease stains on his shirt, or when he softly laid her down on the fuzzy carpet by her coffee table and gently peered into her eyes to check if she was still okay with everything, but right then and there — standing in front of her, the pained apologetic look in his expressive brown eyes because he didn’t want to fuck it up, his throat working hard because he wanted her and didn’t know how to want things for himself, a barely lit Meghan Howland painting behind them as he told her, ‘ _Harper needs me_ ’, like that would ever be a reason for her to walk out on him. He didn’t even propose until years and years later. She got him beat. She will fight him on it. Physically.

“Hey,” Bellamy says, rough with sleep, draping his arm around her as he rolls further onto his stomach. He keeps his eyes closed, but his nose is almost pressed against hers this way and his body covers half of her, which is really the way she likes it best. “I thought they were making you sleep at your mom’s house.”

“They were,” she mumbles, nosing his cheek because hers is cold from standing out on her mother’s driveway in a minidress and thin jacket for so long. He’s nice and warm. “Waited for them to leave and then took an Uber here.”

“My crafty girl,” he praises, stifling a yawn. His thumb lazily moves over the bare skin of the junction of her thigh and hip with windshield wiper motions, her sequin dress long forgotten somewhere by the front door. She thinks. Most of it is a blur by now. Mock-conspiratorially, he adds, “What about all the bad luck this is going to bring over us?”

She blows a raspberry, badly. _Fuck bad luck_. She’s had enough of that to last her over three-to-five lifetimes. She has simply decided bad luck, people, things, whatever you want to call them, aren’t going to happen to her anymore. She won’t let them. “If bad luck existed I wouldn’t have you.”

“ _Wow_. You are a secret romantic after all,” he muses, teasingly, and her eyes flutter open briefly to find him squinting at her through one eye. Pale moonlight filters him through hues of blue, highlighting half of his face; the adorable slope of his nose, the freckles splattered across his cheekbone, the thin scar above his top lip he got saving an entire litter of puppies from a burning tree after an earthquake wrecked the local shelter. (The story changes every time she asks him.) (Her currently undisputed hypothesis is that he doesn’t remember.) (He’s an idiot.) (She loves him.) A small scoff spills from his lip, warm breath on the verge of being stale fanning across her face, “How drunk are you right now?”

“Yep,” Clarke drags out the ‘p’, pressing her nose to his harder. Sometimes she wants to crawl inside of him. She wants to tell him that, but her tongue feels like cotton in her mouth.

He chuckles lowly, a dark rumble from deep in his chest that she feels before she hears it before kissing the corner of her mouth sleepily. Bellamy sounds mostly amused, “Can’t believe you are going to be hung-over at our wedding.”

He’s right. That sounds more like him than her. Even if he’s lost most of his rebel streak over the years. “Rubbing off on me,” she maunders distractedly, her eyelids heavy even though they are closed. She tries to pinch his ribs, but she doesn’t think her arm actually moves.

“About time,” Bellamy agrees sarcastically, sounding far away. “It’s been over four years.”

Clarke hums in agreement when he eventually gives up on trying to hold a conversation and prods her about whether or not she’s drunk any water, which she probably — all things including her really desperate and insistent urge to bury herself into his arms after a night of complete over-stimulation considered — _didn’t_ do before collapsing into their bed and pile on top of him, but future Clarke will just have to pay for that on her own, considering present Clarke is way past getting up for anything less than a rapidly spreading fire at this point. Maybe not even that, it’s probably going to take _at least_ an atomic bomb.

And, honestly, she forgets to bring it up. The whole _liking_ her and wanting to _marry her_ before she even knew how to properly style wavy hair and she didn’t have a single clue what his skin felt like is kind of too much to comprehend when her brain already hurts from thinking too much. The bed is warm and soft, the repetitive movement on her hip distracting, and he smells nice and familiar and comforting enough to make her forget about the faint looming nausea in the pit of her belly, so she’s asleep within minutes. 

The next morning she doesn’t get to fight him either, because as soon as she wakes up she is getting yelled at by her bridal party for sneaking out of her mom’s house like a teenager, loaded up with as much Advil and water she can stomach, and then promptly swept away to Josie’s mansion for hair and make-up and other bridely duties. 

The wedding is small, just their closest friends and family and a few colleagues, but not as small as Clarke would’ve liked. Bellamy’s always wanted the whole big live-laugh-love, Nicholas Sparks-inspired, horrible coverband, slideshow of their childhood pictures and too many emotional speeches kind of wedding, so this was the best compromise they could make.

Her dress is white and lacey and tight on the top with thin straps and the big kind of skirt that’s elegant but just short of being poofy, entirely picked out to get him to call her ‘ _princess_ ’ at least once. Bellamy cries, when he sees her walk down the aisle, and then _again_ during the vows, and Clarke lovingly calls him a pussy under her breath to make him laugh, which obviously happens, and the pastor gives her a serious side-eye. Neither of them are religious, but Octavia married a youth minister so it was important to _her_ , and Bellamy wouldn’t admit it out loud, not even to her, but even at his own wedding he will do everything he can to please the people most important to him. Their first dance is to When You Kiss Me from Shania Twain, because they both think having a song is lame but it’s also the one that played on the radio at the ice cream parlor that first time and coincidentally both of their separate first suggestions upon asked. Their cake is chocolate raspberry truffle flavored and ends up all over their faces, and there’s one too many speeches for Clarke’s liking. By the time they’ve gone through most of them — Josie, her mom, Miller, his sister, Kane, Monty, Harper, even that fucking wannabe EDM-dj neighbour that okay, might be their reluctant friend — her face hurts from faking a smile for so long. 

Clarke feels like she can take her first real breath when the bar opens and everyone finally seems to be distracted and preoccupied with getting drunk and dancing to the playlist of bad pop songs that their dj Jasper — Bellamy’s TA and one of the semi-lost people he’s collected into his group of misfits over the years — lined up for the night. She can finally take a seat next to her _husband,_ maybe have a sip of champagne or a bite of actual food for the first time today. “So,” she starts. expectant.

“So,” he echoes, resting his elbow on the back of her chair. 

She raises her eyebrows, ready to have a good laugh with him over his sister’s antics, maybe embarrass him a little. “Octavia mentioned that you wanted to marry me in high school.” Not even _want,_ but _convinced_ he was going to. What a joke.

His cheeks darken just enough for her to notice, licking his lips before he swallows tightly. _No._ He shrugs, defensively, and instead of denying it, he surprises her with, “So what?” 

Clarke inhales sharply, her shoulders tensing with defeat. “No fucking way. No. _Nope._ I reject it.”

He takes in the defiance on her face with an amused scoff. “You _reject_ it?” He repeats, skeptical.

She purses her lips, searching his face for any signs of betrayal. He used to pair her up with creepy Mbege for mock sessions on purpose, for fuck’s sake. There’s no way he wished to marry her when she was regularly covered in hormonal acné and wore bras two sizes too small because she was too embarrassed to get fitted in case the girl working at Victoria's Secret was cute and within her age-range. “I realized I liked you when you told me how to get rid of that red wine stain on my white blouse.”

That had to have been only a month, maybe six weeks into her moving into his building? She was huffing and puffing and sighing so much as she scrubbed at the top down in the basement he eventually took pity on her and revealed his secrets. Even borrowed her a quarter.

“It’s not a competition,” Bellamy tells her, holier-than-thou enough to make her scrunch up her nose at him. The corner of his mouth twitches, gaze drawn to her nose by the movement first, then lingering on her mouth instead. “And if it was, I’d win hands down. You couldn’t even stand the sight of my face in high school, and it took you months of us living in the same building for you to even say hello to me.” She opens her mouth to protest because she was a new first-year nurse, perpetually stressed and exhausted and on the verge of a burn-out, tiptoeing the line between ‘ _will it be weirder and more awkward if I pretend not to recognize you_ or _if I acknowledge we used to wish each other dead back when the SATs still seemed like the biggest deal in their lives’_ , but he beats her to it, “I was trying to figure out a way to ask you out a week in.”

Clarke huffs, slouching back into her seat with her arms crossed over her chest. The corset of her dress digs into her armpits meanly and she can’t wait to get it off later. “You’re lying.”

He smirks, then finally dips his head forward to press his mouth to hers, brief. “I’m not.”

Her face lights up as she drops her hands on top of her lap. “What about that one night?” She has him right where she wants him now. He could’ve so easily taken advantage of her forgetting her keys in her locker at work. “When I locked myself out of my apartment? I told you I couldn’t reach my mom and that it was late and you offered to pay for a hotel!”

He throws up his free hand in defense, a crinkle of amusement to his brown eyes. “I didn’t want to seem like a creep!” 

_Damnit._ She deflates entirely, instantly knowing he’s telling the truth. “You’re an idiot.”

“No, I’m persistent,” he corrects her, catching her hand in his to run his thumb over the wedding band around her finger, one of his eyebrows arching. “And it paid off, didn’t it?”

She can’t help but grumble, petulant, “For at least one of us.”

“Clarke—” He lets out a huff that’s a mixture of frustration and fondness, reaching on either side of her skirt to tug her chair towards his. His eyes rake her face, and there’s a tinge of humiliation to his tone when he explains, “Look, I don’t know what you want me to say.” He scoffs, probably offended with how easy his teenager self was when it came to girls back then, picking her hand back up from her lap as his eyes glaze over with the memory. “You wore _a lot_ of tight tops and had really strong opinions about socialism, and sometimes you would forget and smile at me after we won and I — I had the biggest crush on you, okay?”

Her heart softens, suddenly feeling stupid for never noticing, for never considering him earlier. _Still,_ it wasn’t all on her _._ She squints her eyes at him. “Just for the record, you did make that bus leave Nationals, didn’t you?”

Bellamy’s nostrils flare just a little. “I was pissed. You were being annoying, not taking it seriously. My entire scholarship hing—”

She hits him in the chest with a balled up fist, although he barely flinches, cutting him off. “I _was_ taking it seriously, dick! You know how punctual I am.” She rolls her eyes at _her_ teenage self’s dramatics. Her mother checking out of her third stint in rehab to elope with her former counselor? Adult Clarke wouldn’t even blink at that. She’d probably yawn. “My mom sprung that whole Marcus thing on me over text so I locked myself in the bathroom to cry.”

“Okay,” he says, tilting his head back slightly, his shoulders tensing and jaw clenching briefly. “Now I feel like an ass.”

Clarke smiles, pleased, reaching up with her other hand to swipe away a tiny, faint smear of buttercream from the cake that’s on his chin. “You should.”

He corrects himself with a pointed look, wry, “Now I feel like this is all one big revenge plan years in the making. Convince me it’s all in the past, make me fall for you, wreck my life.”

“You watch too much Desperate Housewives,” she notes drolly, patting his chest before banding her arm around his shoulders. “Besides, if that was the case, I would’ve left you at the altar. Embarrassed you in front of everyone. Ran off with your sister.”

He’s grinning, big and stupid and so happy, probably mirroring her exact impression. “You had me until you implied you could stand being in the same room as Octavia for longer than an hour and a half.”

“Think of it this way,” Clarke shrugs cutely, inclining her head slightly. “Just ninety minutes of familial obligations at holidays before we go home and pig out on our couch watching stupid reality tv.” She leans closer, the hand of the arm draped around his shoulders scratching at the back of his scalp, holding his gaze, lips brushing his as she talks, “For the rest of your life.”

He smiles against her mouth before kissing her, which feels a lot like a promise. “For the rest of my life.”  
  



End file.
